SERMON: "Faith and Politics"
Rev. Paul Beedle
November 5, 2006
Until just a few weeks ago I had not planned to preach on faith and politics the Sunday before election day. I was going to let faith be faith and politics be politics, and get on with my business while the politicians got on with theirs. But as the campaigns warmed up and the signs started appearing on the lawns of corner gas stations, I started to feel that that was a mistake. So I revised my preaching schedule and communicated with the worship associates who would be affected, and started to ponder what it was that I felt needed to be said – what it was my business to say, letting faith be faith and politics be politics but not keeping silent.
And then I got a letter from Barry Lynn – you know who he is, the executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Barry Lynn wrote me (and countless others – it was a form letter [1]) to warn me against speaking out in favor of any candidate or intervening directly or indirectly in a campaign. “Any activity,” he wrote, “designed to influence the outcome of a partisan election can be construed as intervention. If the IRS determines that your house of worship has engaged in unlawful intervention, it can revoke the institution's tax-exempt status or levy significant fines on the house of worship or its leaders. ... This year, the IRS has announced heightened enforcement. A special `Political Activity Compliance Initiative' has been created. The tax agency has established an expedited process for dealing with reports of violations. [2] ... Houses of worship and other non-profit groups may sponsor voter registration drives and candidate forums if they are truly nonpartisan, and issue advocacy is broadly protected. ... [but] If the IRS finds that a violation has occurred, it may be the house of worship, not the organization that produced the guide, that is penalized.”
Well, that sealed my decision. I knew it was the right decision to speak up rather than let it go, because we cannot go down the road of fear where Barry Lynn's letter leads us. First of all, he's off message. He's talking about freedom of speech, the second clause of the first amendment. But the relevant clause is the first one: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Freedom of the pulpit and freedom of the pew are not directly protected by the constitution, but they are central to our faith tradition. The exercise of our religion involves granting that whoever speaks from our pulpit shall be free to speak truth as she or he understands it, and granting to those who listen the freedom to disagree. Because if we agree in love, no other disagreement can do us any harm. By the way, I want you to know that I also ran this sermon by our Board of Trustees and asked for their input: I have freedom of the pulpit, but I also have a responsibility not to be stupid.
But I believe that if the IRS challenges our tax-exempt status based on what is said from our pulpit – as long as nobody says “vote for so-and-so” from our pulpit – they, not we, will be in violation of the first amendment. Not for encroaching on free speech, but for encroaching on the free exercise of worship. It is not only the letter of the law that matters, but the spirit in which it is enforced. And if churches ought to be barred from becoming tools of partisan politics, how much more so the IRS?
Last month and this month, the IRS has served two summonses on the Rev. Ed Bacon of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California. They relate to a sermon delivered there by the Rev. George Regas, his predecessor and now minister emeritus of All Saints, two years ago on the Sunday before election day. It was titled, “If Jesus Debated Senator Kerry and President Bush.” [3] It did not endorse either candidate. It had plenty to say about ending war and violence, eliminating poverty, and holding on to hope. It was full of statements preceeded by “I believe Jesus would say...” And it ended on this note: “On November 2nd, vote all your values. Bring a sensitive conscience to that ballot box. ... Jesus now speaks to all of us. `I need you to share with me the healing of all life.' When you go into the voting booth on Tuesday, take with you all that you know about Jesus, the peacemaker. Take all that Jesus means to you. Then vote your deepest values.”
Now, imagine a politically conservative Christian hearing those words. And imagine a politically liberal Christian hearing those words. Would they vote the same way? If the political conservative truly believed that waging war was the way to guarantee peace, because that's what he or she knew about Jesus the peacemaker (and there are scriptures a person can cite to support that position), and the political liberal truly believed that Jesus the peacemaker opposed all war or at least would oppose this one, then no, they would not vote the same way. But each would know that they had voted their deepest values.
The Anglican tradition practiced at All Saints is religiously conservative. Religious conservatism tends to ask, persuade or even coerce its members to accept and use venerable and established words and ways to express themselves, because it is their conviction that if we agree in forms, any disagreement can be mediated by those forms to keep us united in community, and the forms themselves appear richer and seem to gain deeper layers of meaning as we discover what lies under the surface of our disagreements. That's the perspective of religious conservatism. That's what the majority of Christian churches try to do. The more they are in this conservative mode, the more deeply they are committed to conformity in religious practice – the liturgy in worship is full of formula and ritual, or everybody is in a Bible study group, or something like that. Folks unite as a community by immersing themselves in forms. That's why George Regas put Jesus in a debate with Bush and Kerry. Jesus is the religious form that stands for lived Christian values. Protestants put those values in Jesus's mouth because he is their symbol of religious authority. But within that religiously conservative framework, it is equally possible to be politically conservative or politically liberal.
I got acquainted with George Regas when I served Neighborhood Church in Pasadena. And I visited All Saints – they had a lovely Thursday evening Taize-style vespers service that I liked to attend now and again, and I went to at least one or two community events they hosted. Some of you might remember meeting my friend Sharon Webb who visited us a while back – she happened to be in Houston and came to hear me one Sunday. Sharon is a member of All Saints. So I feel like I have the flavor of what George Regas is about and what All Saints and its people are about. And what happened there two years ago was simply the free exercise of religion, and its application to the real-life experience of casting a ballot in this democratic republic.
That's the role of religion in politics: to try to keep people honest and responsible, and to make sure that the deepest truth and values are considered in political decisions. You can separate church and state, but you can't separate religion and politics, because both deal in values and both ought to deal with our deepest values and most thoughtful decisions.
If religious conservatives unite by immersing themselves in forms, religious liberals unite by immersing ourselves in conversation. Our worship is about articulating together the values that unite us, not about reinforcing particular ways or words for expressing them. We strive to keep them fresh in ourselves through fresh expressions. And just as it is possible to arrive at political liberalism from a religiously conservative perspective, it is possible to arrive at political conservativism from a religiously liberal perspective.
For example: a Unitarian Universalist I know preached a lay sermon one Sunday titled “How Can You Be A UU and Not Be A Republican?” After explaining that “tolerance is highly regarded by some Republicans just as it is with some UUs,” and explaining that he opposes those whose “hostility to taxes and government spending is basically founded on their selfishness and cheapness” and those others who “tend to speak of free enterprise as a cover for getting government favors at the expense of the general public,” he said: “My kind of Republicanism uses freedom as the touchstone in considering specific political issues. We like and have confidence in people, as individuals. We want individuals to have the freedom to make their own decisions about their own lives with a minimum of governmental interference, just like UUs when it comes to matters of faith and church hierarchies. We Republicans,” he went on, “have a fervent belief in individual freedom, a fearful respect for the blunt-force power of government, and confidence in the basic goodness and common sense of ordinary people. We have a conviction in the wisdom of many small attempts at solutions and a fundamental hostility to the imposition of one final solution. Just like UUs in matters of faith. Just as UUs thrive with the free flow of religious thought, Republicans are convinced that the nation and the world will thrive with the free flow of goods and services in the economy. Civil rights, democracy, and free enterprise are the three legs that support the good life of a free people.” Now, that's something to think about.
My own journey regarding politics has mostly been a story of retreat from parties. In my first presidential election, I was part of the 11% of voters in Connecticut who qualified independent candidate John Anderson to receive federal matching funds for his campaign in that state. I remained an independent until Bill Clinton ran, when I registered as a Democrat because I was impressed with his grasp of issues and wanted him to win the primaries. But after 1996, I re-registered as an independent. I remain independent because I prefer to leave party politics to people who enjoy it and are good at it. I'd rather concentrate on being an active citizen, an informed voter and a good neighbor, to the best of my ability. And that's out of a religious commitment to democratic processes, which are most conducive to living as love demands.
George Regas told his people to bring Jesus and all they knew about him with them into the voting booth. Since love is the doctrine of this church, I would tell you to bring love and all you know about it into the voting booth with you. But I'm aware that it's hard to know how to use such advice, especially when a political party doesn't affirm its core values with clarity.
I was not aware that any political party had a statement of core values until the Green Party adopted its ten key values in 2000. You can find them on the Green Party website. [4] More recently, the Republican Party has followed suit with a statement of principles [5] that can be found on the national gop.com website under “party history.” So far the Democratic Party has no comparable document, and I think that's a problem. Will Rogers famously said, “I don't belong to any organized political party – I'm a Democrat.” That's not a virtue in a political party. Voters have to have some measure of a party's integrity. If, as an independent voter, I want to vote for which set of values I think our society needs a bigger dose of, at least with the Greens and the Republicans I have a statement of what they say they stand for, and I can judge for myself whether the party or my local candidate is really practicing those values. The Greens and the Republicans are on the right track with this, and the Democrats need to get on board. They need to respect the independent voter enough to say what they stand for – not specific programs or causes, but values and principles. What guides a Democrat in thinking about our society's challenges?
In Texas, we have another serious matter of faith and politics to consider. Our state constitution has religious tests written into it, despite its protestations to the contrary. This is the text of Article I, section 4: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”
I think this confuses some of our political leaders, who think that belief in God is evidence of religion. In his recent book, Homegrown Democrat, Garrison Keillor says: “America is not a religious country, no matter how many Americans say they believe in God. I've been in religious countries,” he says, “and this is not one of them. There is no Sabbath here, no fasting or prohibitions, every day is a feast day. You can buy liquor on Sunday almost anywhere, find pornography in any Marriott or Wal-Mart, say any ugly, profane thing on the radio or anywhere...” Well, that's Garrison for you, but he has a point which Unitarian Universalism proves: belief in a Supreme Being is not a requisite of religion. Why is it a requisite for holding political office in Texas?
That proviso was not added later by amendment, it was in the constitution when it was approved in 1876. And the really sad thing is, the original Texas constitution of 1845 was considered one of the best in the nation. Its Article I section 3 said: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust in this State.” No exception, no proviso. And its Article I section 4 said: “All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority ought, in any case whatever, to control or interfere with the rights of conscience in matters of religion; and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious societies or mode of worship. But it shall be the duty of the Legislature to pass such laws as may be necessary to protect every religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of their own mode of public worship.” That's the first Texas constitution.
“In general, the [1876] constitution reflected the lack of faith in government the delegates had formed over the Reconstruction years. They slashed the power of officials along with their salaries and terms of office. ... Because of its tight restrictions, it has had to be amended hundreds of times” – I did a little research, and I counted 581 amendments, more than half of them since 1984 – “and is now considered to be one of the most disorganized and confusing of all state constitutions. In 1974, a constitutional convention met ... to draft a modern document. [but] ended in failure, and no attempt has been made since...” [6] Maybe it's time, 32 years later, to consider it again.
So, that's two political issues I lift up for you this Sunday before election day. If you're a Democrat, it's important to all of us that you get yourselves a clear statement of values or principles, to improve the quality of our political discourse. And for all of us, I call attention to our state constitution and say there's no excuse for the biggest state with the biggest heart for helping our neighbors not to have the best government in America. Whatever our political affiliations, as Unitarian Universalists with a religious commitment to democratic processes, we ought to care enough to be promoting the issue of constitutional reform, even if nobody else is.
Unitarian Universalists are committed to religious freedom and religious tolerance. We are committed to democratic processes. We are committed to these things because we are committed to living as love demands. So, yes, get yourself to the polls and vote on Tuesday. And yes, bring love and all you know about it into the voting booth with you, and vote your deepest values. Which candidates do you believe will do the most to help our society to live as love demands? to help us all to do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our gods?
May we live all aspects of our lives in ways consistent with our deepest values. May we live with integrity, contentment, and in peace.
So may it be. Amen.
[1] http://www.au.org/site/DocServer/2006_letter_to_churches_pdf.pdf?docID=1121#search=%22letter%20Barry%20Lynn%202006%20election%22
[2] See http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=154622,00.html
[3] The summonses and George Regas's sermon can be found at http://www.allsaints-pas.org/all_saints_church.htm
[4] http://www.gp.org/tenkey.shtml
[5] http://www.gop.com/About/AboutRead.aspx?AboutType=3&Section=19
[6] http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/constitution/index.html